


Signs

by inlovewithnight



Category: Hornblower (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-02-06
Updated: 2007-02-06
Packaged: 2017-10-17 21:35:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/181385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight





	Signs

The crash of glass on wood carries down the corridor, and though Archie enters the wardroom only a moment after, it's already too late to know precisely what occurred.

The sight is exquisitely framed, and frozen for what feels like a terribly long moment, long enough for him to become aware of his heart's quickened pace in his chest and the edge of every breath he takes into his lungs. Service aboard Renown has honed his reactions so fine as to be near snapping. Practically anything could be cause for chaos, if Captain Sawyer chose to make it so, and therefore practically anything sets the officers' blood to racing, draws their shoulders to iron tension, overwhelms their minds with the frantic imperative to conceal, contain, correct, to take whatever action necessary to deflect the captain's unpredictable ire.

The entire state of affairs wears on the nerves, to put it mildly. Archie is unsure of how long the human constitution can bear it before succumbing to madness and killing one's shipmates in their sleep. Part of him wondered with a near-hysterical note, upon hearing the crash, if perhaps for someone the point had been reached at last.

But the scene within the wardroom is as still and neat as something prepared for Drury Lane. Horatio stands at the room's far end, as neatly composed and attired as if he were about to don his hat and jacket and report to his watch, instead of being nearly three hours into his recess as he is. His expression is the blank and neutral mask the Navy carves into a man, will he nil he, and his eyes walled and barred to the distant blankness on which Archie has always done him the courtesy of declining to intrude. He finds himself extending that courtesy more and more often with the slow passage of time, and suspects that this as much as anything is a marker of the essential difference between them, and a harbinger of things to come. Horatio will recede to great heights, in time that draws shorter by the day, and Archie will touch fingers to hat-brim and let him go.

Horatio is staring dispassionately at the wardroom floor. Archie follows his gaze to a spill of white sand, broken glass, and splintered dowels. The hourglass has fallen.

"Is that an omen, do you think?" Horatio asks, his tone light and conversational, as if there is no matter here at all.

"Difficult to say." Archie walks the length of the table, noting how far the boldest chips of glass and sand flew. "Did it fall or did you throw it?"

Horatio's mouth curves in the slightest approximation of a smile. "Your wit is appreciated as ever, Mr. Kennedy," he says, kneeling to the deck and reaching for the largest bits of glass. "Though perhaps not so much as a brush, at the moment."

Archie fetches the brush from its drawer and crouches beside his friend. "You didn't answer the question."

Horatio glances at him and rolls his eyes, that shadow of a smile still in place, his long fingers deftly gathering shards of glass and collecting them in the shallow bowl formed by the largest unbroken piece. Something stirs in his eyes--some diffuse light of fondness not unacquainted with affection--and that return from the detachment and remove that foretells the man to be is reassuring enough that Archie supposes he ought to be embarrassed. It is a childish whim, to desire to keep the Hornblower of now, whom he is so bold to think of as _his_ Horatio, rather than permit the man to become the Hornblower he is meant to be.

And yet he is not embarrassed, only pleased with his triumph no bigger than these grains of sand. He even permits Horatio his way and does not press the question that Hornblower still has not answered.

They clean up the little mess in silence, and when Archie returns to his watch he tosses the debris over the rail. It vanishes instantly into the shadows around the hull, even before it meets the water, and he wonders, in the case that there _was_ some omen in the broken avatar of order and time, if consigning it to the deep could set things right.  
***  
Three days later one of the ship's cats kills a two-headed rat and leaves it in the center of the sailors' mess. The uproar among the crew is ridiculous and entirely out of proportion, and the lieutenants find themselves having to lay threats left and right even after Bush tosses the poor bloody thing overboard. They stifle the mutters of ill signs and portents with calls for drills and short rations that the captain promptly countermands.

In his Sunday address, Sawyer mentions almost as an aside that the ship will put in to the Royal Dockyards at Ireland Island for resupply. He then moves on to his standard rants about loyalty and honor and the creeping shadows of conspiracy and treason behind every beam. Archie ignores him, as he has learned to do, allowing the fearful, fretful old voice to fade to no more than the sigh of the sea.

He watches Horatio watch the gulls over the waves, scavenger birds welcoming them to Bermuda, and when the captain asks God's blessing on Renown and her crew, he neglects to say Amen.  
***  
The rum in Bermuda is thick and sweet, the food oddly spiced, the air heavy and warm in Archie's lungs. He and Horatio walk through the raucous crowds in the streets, the same as and yet entirely different from the tumultuous rabble of home, but retire to their rooms after only a short time. They are both tired, in body and spirit; there is little desire even to speak until they are securely behind the locked door.

Archie finds that the silence lingers there as well, at first. Horatio sighs softly as he hangs his hat and jacket, loosens his queue, tugs his stock free, but he says nothing. Archie watches him, slowly removing his own garments, unable to read anything from Horatio's face except the bone-deep weariness he knows is echoed on his own.

Horatio's eyes are closed, his fingers slowly working to free his waistcoat buttons by touch. Archie sits on the edge of the mattress and loosens the laces of his boots, glancing at the shadows around the floorboards for the jack. He doesn't see it, and sighs, letting his feet fall to the floor again. "Horatio."

Horatio turns his head, eyes still closed, fingers fumbling at the final button with scarce effect. "Hmm?"

"Could you help me, please." It's less a request than a foregone conclusion; he will ask and Horatio will answer, just as it has ever been.

Horatio crosses over to him in silence, blinking slowly, his eyes shadowed hollows in his pale, fine-boned face. The play of light on Horatio's face is art, and always has been to Archie's eyes. He doesn't assign words to what passes between them; "love" and the rest are foreign terms, belonging to another world. What they are simply _is_ , for so long as they are allowed to keep it, and though Archie knows that final day draws close, for now he will hold to what is here and call it beauty.

His hand settles on Horatio's face, curving around the smooth line of his cheek, and Horatio stills. Archie shakes his head, boots forgotten, and Horatio leans in to kiss him, lightly and softly, his mouth tasting of the warm, sweet island liquor. He bears Archie back onto the bed with his weight, settling against him, their mouths still pressed together and hands working to tug shirts free.

Horatio's hand skims the front of Archie's breeches, slipping these buttons far more deftly than his waistcoat's. Archie can feel Horatio's pulse quickening as his hands move over his lover's body, deeper reserves of energy stirring in response to this need. And it is need, tonight, more than desire. Desire has yielded to the relentless press of Renown, crumbled to dust and fallen away, and what remains is the stone and steel at the core of them, the most elemental drives.

Horatio tugs the breeches down Archie's thighs and moves to kneel between his legs, barely ghosting a breath and a kiss across Archie's stomach before he takes him in his mouth, the niceties sacrificed to that same aching need, to take what they can in selfish hands and hold it close, in this hour that feels like an ending for all that there's no reason why.

Archie bites his lip and twists the sheets in his fingers, struggling to keep silent as his body heats and tenses under Horatio's ministrations. The walls are thin here, flimsy, and he's grown so used to the specter of unfriendly watchers that he finds he cannot let it go. There's little enough time to worry; the need burns through him fast as gunpowder, he arches and comes, and Horatio eases away, watching him with those dark eyes that say so much, but in script that Archie finds hard to read anymore.

He reaches for Horatio, tugs him close again, and nearly shudders with relief when Horatio comes to him easily, seeking his mouth to kiss again. The taste of the rum is overlaid now with the heavier, salt-sour taste of Archie's release, and want stirs in him again, hunger to give Horatio what he was given. He reaches down and finds that somehow his watchfulness had faltered, and Horatio's breeches are already undone, his cock hard beneath Archie's palm.

He takes Horatio in hand, strokes him slowly, and Horatio's eyes close, his breath leaving him with a shudder. "Please," he murmurs against Archie's mouth between shallow, desperate kisses. "Like this. Please."

Archie complies, for as much as Horatio always gives what Archie asks, the favor is returned in full. They kiss and press tight together in the tangle of sheets and half-shed clothing, Archie's hand moving firm and fast on Horatio's cock, until Horatio tenses and spends, his face pressed to Archie's shoulder to keep his silence.

After, they tug their shirts down over themselves and crawl under the sheets, the most tenuous of concessions to propriety. That same inexplicable tension tightens Archie's chest, as if he's waiting for a threatened yet unnamed blow.

Horatio falls asleep with his face turned toward Archie, one hand brushing light as breath against Archie's thigh. Archie's breath eases at the contact, though he cannot fathom what other possibility he might have feared.  
***  
In the morning, they have only a brief time to tidy themselves before they return to Renown. Archie stands at the basin, frowning into the warped little mirror and willing his hands steady enough to permit him to shave without cutting his own throat.

"Damn sand," Horatio remarks, brushing halfheartedly at his boots. "Follows us everywhere."

Archie glances down and indeed, the fine white sand from the beach is scattered across the rough wooden floor. "Likely blows in through the cracks in the walls."

Horatio grunts and resumes his work, and Archie turns back to the mirror, lifting the razor to his cheek.

For all his care, at one point his hand does slip, and a scarlet line blooms along his cheekbone. "Damn," he mutters, touching his fingers to it. "Well, that's lovely."

Horatio frowns and comes over to look, and Archie shakes his head, surprised by the rate of the blood welling beneath his fingertips but no more than annoyed. "Just a scratch."

The blood splashes bright and clear across the linen of his shirt, and the scattered sand on the floor, bold as a warning.  



End file.
